The dead horse, I’m beating it.

You know how I feel. You know what I'm going to say. Despite the fact that I still distinctly remember being sad when Regan was voted into office the first time, this is the most important election in my life time. I hope I have a lot of years left, but I know this year will always be a BIGGIE no matter how long I live. They are expecting record numbers which is GOOD. People should be excited to speak their minds EVERY election. But times are hard and this year we have more on our minds than ever. We want our voices to be heard loud and clear. We want to stand up and take our futures by the hand, to guide them in a better direction, for those who came before and those who will come after. I know no matter where you live, there are important decisions to be made that will effect how we live, will effect the reality our children will grow up in. Your voice matters, for us and for them. I will use my voice tomorrow to make my future better. Will you join me? California polls open at 7am and close at 8. If you are in line by 8 you will still be allowed to vote.

We vote tomorrow!!

Here is a 12 minute video that goes into detail dispelling any "truths" that the Yes on 8 people are trying to spread via their website. Its good stuff guys!





Stand with me tomorrow in defense of human rights.
VOTE NO ON PROP 8!
Thank you.

I saw my friend Laura today

She was sad and exhausted. One of her co-workers at the school passed away last week. Laura was making a nice poster with pictures and a few nice paragraphs about her co-workers life and work. She put it all together cause she wanted to do something. She is thoughtful like that and she is a person of action which explains her exhaustion.

A little back story: This summer Laura married her partner of 10 years. The state made it legal for them to get married earlier this year and she and her partner Karla jumped at the opportunity. The ceremony was outside at a park and their families came together from all over the US to help them celebrate.

The speeches were sweet and loving, like you'd expect at any wedding reception but these had something different that I had never heard. They were filled with gratitude. Laura and Karla have been together over 10 years and were never able to get married before this year. They were GRATEFUL to finally be allowed to marry legally in California. Ironically the state had ordained Laura to PERFORM her own brothers wedding ceremony a handful of years ago, but she could not actually get married herself.

Fast forward to today when I asked her what she had been up to lately. She said during the week I'm here (work) and all my nights and weekends I'm at rallies fighting for my marriage.

Fighting for her marriage.

What she is referring to is Prop 8 that is going to be on the ballot here in Cali next month. This bill is practically sponsored by the Mormon church and basically it states (from the wiki site) "If it passes, it will add a new constitutional amendment to the California Constitution that will say "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" and it will be known in law as the California Marriage Protection Act". Apparently if the state allows the "gays to have their gay" it will some how cause every single Mormon marriage to dissolve and all of their children will spontaneously combust.

Ya know, I thought conservative Republicans wanted less government involvement in our day to day lives? It seems to me that these fuckers not only want to be in my pink parts (abortion laws) but they want to be in peoples private homes and bedrooms as well. Lemme tell ya, you are most certainly not welcome in any of them. There is no place for you in there!

When I think about this I get so angry I can't drop enough F-bombs. I want to know HOW IN THE HELL does my two friends being married, having a houseful of rescued pets, sharing their holidays together and exchanging rings hurt these people? HOW? The TV ads claim that they will teach gay marriage in public schools if this legislation doesn't pass. I'm sorry, WHAT? First of all this wrongly implies that this is currently happening in schools and second, find me a public school teacher that would touch that subject with a 10 foot pole!

The worst thing about ignorance is that it is so blindly hurtful and, well, ignorant. Can you imagine the state walking into your home and telling and your spouse that your marriage is no longer valid? I'm sorry, but all those commitments you made and promises you spoke? Sorry, but I'm afraid the government doesn't think you deserve that. But by all means, those one out of every two couples who take it for grated and throw it down the toilet every year, they are safe, thank God. Cause those marriages? They are sacred.

Needless to say I'm voting no on Prop 8 in two weeks. Join me?

8. Is. Hate.

Resources:

http://www.letcaliforniaring.org

http://www.hrc.org/

http://www.californiansagainsthate.com/

Freedom of Religion, anyone?

My lovely friend Lore shared these links with me today. I was outraged at what human beings are capable of doing to other human beings and what gets carried out for the perceived good of our nation.

Apparently a few weeks back, in time for the anniversary of 9/11 a DVD was distributed free in 70 newspapers based in 14 swing states, Ohio and PA to name two. The DVD is titled Obsession; Radical Islam's War Against the West and it is basically anti Muslim propaganda. It appears to be available on YouTube if you can sit through it. Its filled with lots of bad TV show reenactments with white people over enunciating Arabic and taking the few educated talking heads out of context.
While I understand there are extremists out there who really feel this way, they are not the majority and they are certainly not living the peaceful spiritual ideal most Muslim's strive for.
The maker of this video, originally released in 2006, is a registered non-profit who happened to have items on their webpage indicating they are backing John McCain for president which they have since taken down.
I am positive his camp has no knowledge of the groups actions but the fear mongering to gain votes truly disgusts me. Is your candidate qualified? Does he stand for what you believe? Excellent! Slap a sticker on your car, stick a sign in your front lawn and call it a day. Gaining votes through fear does not help our country and goes against what we stand for.

Case in point:

Dayton Ohio, just 4 days after these DVDs were distributed there, a group of children whose parents were participating in evening prayers at a Mosque were pepper sprayed through a street level open window. The story is written about on Chris Rodda's weblog. The story was picked up also by one Philadelphia area paper as well but that's it. Why was this not reported anywhere else?

The last link I have in my trifecta of disgust is the one directly to the Dayton Daily News. The ONLY time the paper mentioned this horrific attack was when the police (in their UNBELIEVABLE OVERSIGHT) deemed this attack on these children NOT a hate crime.
Great detective work there, Lou.
What really makes me want to slap these rednecks in the face is the fact that these people are in America so they can freely and safely practice their religion as they so choose. Do the words "Freedom of Religion" ring ANY bells at all?? Do you not see the flaw in your reasoning there? Last time I checked, America is for everyone, not just the poor, white and ignorant.

I mean really, think about that. Not feeling safe at church, fearing for your life or the life of your children at church.
Imagine this, you are attending Sunday services, sitting in the pew with your spouse, reading along in the bible. Your children are down the hall making disciple puppets out of chunks of felt and Styrofoam balls when out of no where some guy hoses your childrens faces and the children of your fellow church goers with pepper spray through an open window. All you hear is the far away sounds of children screaming and you have no idea what happened.
You run down the hall, your eyes and throat starting to burn, you can't get to them fast enough with all the chaos. You finally reach them and they are still screaming and in terrible pain. After dealing with paramedics and police you go home and your child sleeps with you because they are too scared to sleep alone and you are too scared to let them. They lay next to you in the dark, sobbing all night.
Sick isn't it? Would you feel comfortable going back there? What a desperate feeling to not feel at ease in your own house of worship...
Just because you are a majority, doesn't make you any righter than the next guy.


Some final thoughts...
Honestly why was this story confined to only 2 news outlets? This outrages me almost as much as the suffering those families had to endure. I urge you to contact your local news outlets and ask why they never covered the incident at the mosque.
If the paper that you receive your local news from is on that list at the bottom of the article I also urge you to email your paper and ask why they chose to put that DVD in with the circulars.
This will only take a few minutes Please, please don't let this hate crime get brushed under the rug. We all deserve to feel safe wherever we choose to pray.

Fontina and Black Pepper-Stuffed Crusty Loaves

Friday while I was ahem...working I happened upon a foodie blog that hilariously described a very yummy sounding and looking loaf of cheesy bread. Who can resist cheesy bread I ask you?? Not me, especially not 25 minutes before my lunch break. The blog linked back to the original recipe on the King Arthur Flour website. Look at that picture! And they use the words "cheese" and "volcano" for Christ's sake! I am only HUMAN!
Saturday I picked up the goodies and got the starter going. I let it sit overnight and it looked like this when I woke up Sunday.

I added the rest of the ingredients to the starter.
It was kinda dry and looked like this.
























I kneaded it for 10 minutes til it was pretty smooth.








That's kneaded by hand, people, Tee Tee doesn't own a mixer)











Then I set it in an oiled bowl and let it proof.


















The first proofing took just under an hour even though the recipe said it might take up tot 2. But I do have a hot kitchen, or else it just knows I am impatient as most of the recipes I make at home never take as long to rise as the recipe says it will.




After 50 minutes it looked like this.







I like to use a bowl with measurements on it so I can see exactly how much volume I've achieved.
















The original recipe called for gruyere but the only cheese that looked good at my store was the Fontina so I used that instead. So I grated up 3 cups -yes, an extra half cup, don't judge me!
























I pressed the dough out to the size of the sheet pan and sprinkled on the cheese (more like heaped) and decided that it needed some fresh ground black pepper too.

























Then I rolled it up covered it and left it to rise again, easy peasy!
























When it was nice and puffy I sliced it up in to 5 boule-type loaves and set it on the baking sheets cheese side up.



















These beauties baked for about 35 minutes and came out looking like magic.
For whatever reason Blogspot doesn't want to right my image. But you get the idea. They were tasty as hell but next time more black pepper and I MUST invest in some parchment paper cause I'm not sure my sheet trays will ever recover :)

Cake Competition

This weekend I competed in a cake competition. I was asked to help one of my school mates who I have nicknamed 'the rockstar'. He is not quite 19 and he makes amazing cakes. He was pretty intimidated by the whole thing with good reason. These events are a hell of a lot of pressure. We were given parameters and time limits and a theme of "America's Best" and we also had 48 hours notice. Holy. Crap.















I will take this time to tell you the the other teams knew about this 6 months in advance and each team had made their cake at least 3 times. One team had made their cake 6 (!) times. We found out about this Tuesday night and decided to do it Wednesday. The first day of the contest was Friday.
On Wednesday Ramon started making cakes, Thursday afternoon we loaded our equipment and cakes and fillings into the hotel and Thursday night we made our taster cake and a few of the pieces that we knew we were going to need. I made what seemed like a million pieces of corn and the most perfect pat of melty butter ever! =)















Friday AM we finalized our design (mostly) and at noon we were off! Only we weren't. The people who ran the show were so fuckin disorganized that we didn't get going until 12:30.
They let us start an hour early on Saturday to make up for it, thank goodness. I think no matter how much planning and pre work you do, it always comes down to the wire. By the end of Friday all of our cakes were carved and crumb coated, our remote control and coke bottle were formed out of rice crispies. I felt really confident. But coming down to the last two hours I was panicking. I was painting everything as fast as I could while Ramon was putting together and putting the final royal icing touches on the coke bottle and the dinner box.

When we went to put the frame on the TV it turned out to be too small so I ran off to roll out another one. I was rolling a bit frantically when one of my chefs told me we had 15 minutes left. I looked over at Ramon who was writing on the coke bottle and our TV still wasn't painted.
I was immediately nauseous and had to fight off the urge to cry. To come all this way and not be
able to finish! UGH!! In my head I said "fuck it" I am gonna keep rolling until they tell me to stop. Turns out we had 50 (!) minutes left. Thank God, we needed almost every second.
I rolled out the frame, cut it to shape, then I painted the TV, all with a bit of panic in my heart but determined to finish.














We slapped the frame on the tv and it wasn't staying very well so we glued it with glucose and hoped for the best. We stuck it on the tray with a few minutes to spare. Sadly the frame started to sag so -illegally, after time was up-we jabbed a few tooth pics in it to get it to stay. It kind of worked but I heard from one of the guys that we got judged down for it, no surprise really. Here is our entry:




So we let out our breath, high-fived each other and got lots of hugs and back pats from our chefs. It felt amazing to have completed this (and done a kick ass job BTW) with ZERO notice and minimal planning. Then the really hard part began...

We sat waiting for the judges to come and we waited... As we waited 3 of the cakes fell and two others started to fall. Handles fell off of the cake that would up being 3rd place, our frame slipped just a bit more, and we still waited. Our families had been ushered out into another area of the hotel and then were told to go home then they were told to stay and then told to go home again, by the same person! Can you say disorganized?
All the contestants and chefs chatted nervously and consoled the teams whose cakes fell. And finally they came. Chef Duff, Christophe Bader (head pastry chef for the Hilton) and another Austrian chef.
We watched them like hawks and chewed our nails as they studied our cakes. I've never been so stressed in my life. I mean I've been stressed; I've had 20 bucks a month for groceries and food, I've waited for test results when they thought my mom had cancer in her bladder, I've sat in the 'family room' at the hospital waiting for my dad to come out of heart surgery but this was stress that had to do with my personal performance- completely different kind of emotional pressure. Here is Duff and crew looking at our cake.







In the foreground you can see the amazing burger and fries cake that was done by the other team from my school.




After what seemed like an eternity the cheesy announcer guy came on and said they were ready to announce the winners. At this point someone opened the doors and our families who were close to murdering the organizers poured back into the hall.
The announcements were kind of a blur after they announced the luggage cake had taken third. That was one of the best ones in the room so we couldn't wait to hear who was 2nd and 1st! When they announced 2nd place there were a few seconds of confusion. Not sure if this was because they announced winners by our team numbers or if they were in as much disbelief as the rest of us were over their cake placing 2nd. Then they announced the winner. The school from Vegas took it with their cake about...Vegas. It was cute and intricate and very showy-kinda like Vegas :)
My issue with these cakes winning was the criteria we were given when we entered.
Both cakes were too big according to the paperwork we were given and we were told that difficulty would be judged by carving. The 1st place cake had very minimal carving. It was also frustrating that we weren't told how our cakes were judged, what lost us points etc, we only heard rumors from some people who talked to one or two of the judges.
This stuff made for kind of a weird night after all was said and done. We all went home in kind of a daze of physical and emotional exhaustion. The next day when we came back to clean up, we couldn't help but wonder exactly what the judges saw and what could we have done differently.
What took a while to break through the wall of sour grapes was how proud I was of our two teams. The strongest emotions are rarely pure, they are always mingled with several different emotions. In my case it was pride mixed with excitement and disappointment and a disbelief at the fact that only 3 days before this wasn't even a thought in my head. We worked our asses off, we had no time to plan, no time to think and hardly any time to breathe. We just jumped in and I think we were able to hold our own.
I have to mention here that none of this would have happened if it wasn't for Ramon. This guy is an amazing talent and I was very honored that he chose me to compete with him. He came up with the design and did the carving, he also did all the finish painting and he stabilized our cake, which is BIG as the cakes that had been made 3-6 times before still fell over! And at some point in the middle of the night, the crazy lady running the show decided that our cakes needed to be moved from where the competition took place, to the middle of the food show. Turns out at 2am, hotel employees aren't really careful about moving stuff. Each of the cakes that were still intact after the judging, collapsed or fell over during the move EXCEPT for our cake. It was still 95% intact the next day. Our tv screen sagged a bit and one of the apples fell off of our dessert but That. Was. It. Structurally it was still right as rain. This was another HUGE accomplishment in my eyes and one more reason why Ramon ROCKS. Here we are with our chef. She was very proud of us too :)

This was a lot to read and if you're still here, I know that you really care :) This was a huge deal for me and I had to post a lot about it.
Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us and gave us words of encouragement. It means more than I can say.

Recipe for Chocolate Bread Pudding with Kaluha sauce

3 TBSP Butter
1.25 LBS bread (French or Italian)
3/4 cup choc chips (I used milk)
3 large eggs
4 cups whole milk
2 cups sugar
2 TBSP vanilla
1 heaping TBSP cocoa powder

Spread the butter in your 9x13 baking pan. I only used about 1/2 of the butter here and didn't have any major sticking issues.
Cube the bread and set in the buttered pan. Sprinkle chocolate chips in with the cubed bread.
Whisk eggs until frothy then whisk in milk, sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla.
Pour the liquid over the bread and chips. Let this sit until absorbed about half an hour. Every few minutes use a spatula to press the bread into the liquid. Preheat your oven to 375. When the bread has absorbed all the liquid and is nice a squishy, bake at 375 for about an hour. Check on it after 45 minutes but it should be golden all over and the high points will look toasted. Let sit for a few minutes before cutting. This is best served warm.

Kahlua Sauce
Bread pudding is traditionally served with whiskey sauce but I wanted to make something that would taste really nice with the chocolate so I made my sauce with Kahlua instead. mmm

1 stick of butter + 1 TBSP for the end
1 cup sugar
1/4 + cup Kahlua
1 TBSP water
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp salt
1 egg

Melt the stick butter in sauce pan- reserving the last TBSP for the end.
Add sugar and rest of ingredients but the egg and butter and cook til all the sugar is dissolved.
Remove from the heat and whisk in the egg. Return it to medium heat and stirring gently bring it to a simmer until it thickens about 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in last TBSP of butter to make your sauce nice and shiny.
Serve immediately over the bread pudding or ice cream or waffles or just your tongue. Can sit at room temp for 8 hours and will last in the fridge about 3 days.